


Bringer of Darkness

by ofstormsandwolves



Series: The Truth Is Out There [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2019-06-26 10:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15661434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstormsandwolves/pseuds/ofstormsandwolves
Summary: 10/Rose X-Files AU. The Doctor and Rose find themselves at the doorstep of Sanctuary Base Science Facility after one of its employees goes missing without a trace. But what starts out as a seemingly unsolvable missing persons investigation quickly becomes the case from hell...





	1. Chapter 1

Rose Tyler sighed as she entered the small basement office she shared with the Doctor, noting that the man still hadn’t tidied up and was instead tinkering with one of his many projects. She made her way across the cramped room and over to where one of the desks had been cleared off for her to use. Three months into working with the Doctor, and she still wasn’t totally used to the mess in the office.

“You need to go for your medical,” she told him as she took up her seat at her desk.

The Doctor blinked, looked across the room at her, and frowned. “Why?”

“Because,” Rose sighed, logging into her computer, “you need to have one. You’re a Torchwood agent, they have to be sure you’re fit enough to be in the field.”

The Doctor looked affronted at that. “I am perfectly fit, Rose Tyler! Look at me! I’m the peak of physical fitness!”

Rose eyed him over the top of her computer. “When did you last eat?”

He blinked, opening his mouth to respond, before closing it again, looking a little perplexed. Rose gave him a look.

“Just book the medical. You can do it over email.”

The Doctor pulled a face and turned back to his tinkering.

“Oh, stop it,” Rose told him, turning back to her own work. “You’re worse than my little brother. Besides, I’ve got to have a medical too. It’s not some personal vendetta against you, you know.”

He huffed, and dropped the mess of wires and circuits he’d been tinkering with onto his desk.

“Fine,” he sighed, pulling his keyboard across his desk, “but only if I don’t have to see that Doctor Harper.”

~0~0~

The Doctor had just stopped grumbling and booked his medical in on the online database when there was a knock on the door. Rose looked up from where she’d been quietly working on some reports and trying to block out the Doctor’s complaining to see her dad in the doorway. The Doctor blinked at Rose, who just shrugged back in confusion. 

“Hi, Dad,” Rose said, a little baffled. “Why are you here?”

Pete held up a file, before handing it to the Doctor who began flicking through it. “Your mum wants to know if you’re still coming for dinner on Sunday, by the way. I did say I wouldn’t ask you at work, but can you just send her a quick text?”

Rose nodded, but she was watching the Doctor flick through the file. “Yeah,” she agreed, a little absent-mindedly, “I’ll text her later. What’s the file on?”

Pete opened his mouth to respond, but the Doctor got there first.

“Sanctuary Base Science Facility,” he said, already on his feet and moving across the office to hand the file to Rose. “Missing person, by the looks of it.”

“Right,” Rose frowned, glancing through the file before turning to her dad. “And why’ve you brought this to us?”

Pete sighed at that, and looked a little weary. “No one upstairs will touch it,” he explained. “All say it’s a matter for the Police.”

“Well, it is, Mr Tyler,” the Doctor pointed out, hands in the pockets of his pinstripe trousers. “Why have the Police handed it to us?” 

Pete shifted a little uncomfortably then. “Well, they seem to think that Mr Walker disappeared of his own accord. He’d recently gone through a messy divorce, and he’s in a lot of debt.”

“So what?” Rose questioned. “He just left?”

“That’s what the Police seem to think,” Pete responded.

The Doctor was watching Pete carefully. “But if the Police have closed the case, why has it been passed to Torchwood? Surely just put him down as a missing person?”

“In ordinary circumstances, yes,” Pete admitted. “But Mr Walker- the missing man- isn’t on any CCTV leaving the building, and he didn’t use his key card to leave either.”

“And he worked for this science facility?” Rose asked.

Her dad nodded. “For nearly fifteen years. He’s hardly ever had a sick day, and when he does he always calls in. Nobody’s heard from him since last Tuesday.”

Rose and the Doctor exchanged a look.

“Are you sure he didn’t just leave through a different door?” Rose asked. “Or followed someone out so he didn’t use his key card?”

But Pete shook his head. “We’ve already looked into that, but it looks unlikely. The Sanctuary Base facility has a large amount of expensive equipment, as well as a lot of chemicals for use in experiments. No one can get in or out without a key card. You need to sign in and be issued with a visitor’s card just to get past reception.”

Rose glanced at the Doctor then. “You want to look into this, don’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, and she could already see that he was beginning to grin.

“Disappearing person, Rose,” he responded a little too eagerly. “It’s our duty to investigate.”

Rose rolled her eyes at his grinning face, and he just waggled his eyebrows in response.

Pete, who could by now tell that he’d been forgotten, cleared his throat purposefully. “I’ll be getting back to my office then,” he told them, suppressing his own small smirk as both his daughter and the Doctor jumped at his voice. He’d just turned to leave when he remembered something else. “Oh, and Rose, can you please phone Shareen? She keeps phoning us. Something about her having lost your mobile number, and she’s apparently never had your home number. Just... Give her a ring. She’s driving me nuts. And I think she’s getting sick of Tony answering the phone to her.”

Rose smirked a little at that, but nodded. “Will do,” she assured him. “And I’ll text Mum later, once we’ve got started on this case.”  
Pete nodded, and saw himself out as the Doctor plucked the file from Rose and began reading aloud from the case file.

~0~0~

“Sanctuary Base Science Facility,” the Doctor announced as he climbed out of the car and turned to face the large steel and glass building across the road from where they’d parked.

“Looks fancy,” Rose noted as she walked round the car to cross the road with the Doctor.

They made a dash for it then, weaving through the London traffic and reaching the opposite pavement. 

“So,” Rose said as they made their way towards the door, “what do they do here?”

The Doctor sniffed. “According to their website, a few different things. They’ve got several labs, seemingly specialising in different things. They’re doing a lot of research into robotics, but they also do a lot of work in geology, and from what I can gather they test chemicals as well.”

Rose wrinkled her nose. “What, like testing on animals and stuff?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Not that I’m aware of. But possibly.” He held the door open for Rose then, and she made her way inside.

The inside of the building was just as fancy and modern as the outside, and the reception desk was in front of a gleaming white wall displaying the Sanctuary Base Science Facility logo. The Doctor led the way to the desk, leaning against it with his Torchwood ID in hand, smiling at the receptionist.

“Hi,” he grinned, before leaning a little closer to read the girl’s name badge, “Nina! I’m the Doctor, this is Agent Rose Tyler, we’re with Torchwood. We’ve come to investigate a report of a missing person.”

Nina looked between the Doctor and Rose a little worriedly. “This is about Mr Walker, yeah?” she asked, chewing her bottom lip. “They said you’d be coming in today.”

“Did you know him well?” Rose asked gently.

Nina shrugged. “Kinda,” she admitted. “I’ve worked here for three years. Mr Walker was nice. Always said hello.”

The Doctor glanced at Rose before speaking again. “And you don’t know why he would disappear? No one who’d want to hurt him? No reason for him to up and leave?”

Nina shrugged again. “Not that I know of. I mean, I know he and his wife separated recently, but Walker had friends here. He doesn’t seem the type to just run off.” She sighed then. “I’m sorry, I’m probably not being much help.”

“No, you’ve been very helpful,” Rose assured her gently. “Is there anyone else around who could maybe provide more information?”

Nina nodded. “His lab team, in lab 6. They knew him better than me, they might be more help.”

She pushed a visitor’s book across the desk then, and they signed their names in before taking two visitors’ badges from Nina.

“Just swipe your badge against the scanner to get in,” Nina explained helpfully as they moved for the large glass double doors to the left of the reception desk.

“And this is how everyone gets in and out?” the Doctor asked with a small frown. 

Nina nodded. 

“And Walker didn’t scan his card to get out that night?” he asked again.

Nina shook her head. “That’s what’s so weird,” she told them. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The Doctor and Rose exchanged looks at that.

“Thank you,” Rose said, and scanned her card before pushing the door open and stepping through.

~0~0~

There had been another set of glass double doors they had to scan their way through at the other end of the corridor, before they could even reach the labs deep inside the facility.

“No chance he just walked out, then,” Rose mumbled as they made their way past various labs.

“Not if that security’s anything to go by,” the Doctor agreed. “Like I said, they deal with a lot of experiments and a lot of dangerous chemicals, Rose. Can’t have just anyone walking in.”

They finally reached a door with a stainless steel plaque beside it stating ‘Sanctuary Base 6’.

“Is this it?” Rose asked, glancing at the Doctor.

Instead of looking at her, he simply shrugged and raised a hand to knock. “Why don’t we find out?”


	2. Chapter 2

Zachary Cross Flane looked up with a frown as there was a knock on the door. He spared a glance at his colleagues, before crossing the lab to open it. On the other side of the door, Rose and the Doctor stood, their Torchwood badges already in hand. Before they could even open their mouths to introduce themselves, Zach was sighing and stepping back to let them in.

“It’s Torchwood,” he told his colleagues wearily. “They need to talk to us about Walker.”

“You knew we were coming then,” the Doctor noted, mildly surprised. “I’m the Doctor, this is Agent Tyler.”

“If you weren’t expected, you wouldn’t have got past reception,” Zach told them, eyeing the pair of them a little warily. “I’m Zachary Cross Flane, acting key holder for Sanctuary Base 6.”

He shook the Doctor’s hand, and then Rose’s.

“I’m sorry,” Rose frowned in confusion, “but what exactly does ‘acting key holder’ mean?”

“It means I’m in charge of this lab,” Zach explained. “A key holder here at Sanctuary Base means you hold the key to the lab. You’re responsible for unlocking it every morning, locking it up at night, keeping it tidy, all that stuff. Key holders are like heads of departments; this lab specialises in geology, and so as acting key holder I’m in charge of geological research.”

“But you’re only acting key holder,” the Doctor noted, “so is it right to assume that it was Mr Walker who was the key holder for this lab?”

Zach glanced at his colleagues, before nodding. “Yeah. And he was much better at it than me. Always kept things organised. Now look at it.” He waved a hand at the clutter that had accumulated on the surfaces of the lab.

“It’s not that bad,” one of the women piped up. “We’ve just been busy. And anyway, Walker had his style of running things, you’ve got yours.”

“And you are?” Rose asked the woman quickly, keen to get a note of everyone’s names before they began questioning them properly.

“Ida,” the woman responded with a small smile. “Ida Scott. Geologist. I’ve worked here for nearly a decade now.”

“So if Walker was in charge of the lab, what were his responsibilities?” the Doctor interrupted.

Zach let out a breath. “Pretty much everything,” he admitted. “If this were a ship, he’d be captain. Anything went wrong- equipment broken, risk assessments not completed, research not properly archived- it was his responsibility. He’d be held accountable.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “A lot of responsibility to place on one person.”

The lab crew shared a look.

“That’s how things work round here,” a dark-haired man with olive skin said suddenly, arms folded across his chest, seeming a little agitated. “You need to discuss that with management.”

“Danny,” Zach sighed, rounding on the younger man, “they’re just doing their job.”

“It’s just that,” Rose continued gently, “seeing as Walker has disappeared suddenly, we need to look at all possibilities. If he was under a lot of pressure at work, it might account for why no one can get hold of him.”

A young woman a few years Rose’s junior shook her head at that. “Walker isn’t like that,” she insisted, and her arms were wrapped around herself too, but she seemed more vulnerable than agitated like Danny. “He wouldn’t just walk out on us.” She seemed to catch herself then, and quickly introduced herself. “Scooti Manista, apprentice.”

Rose smiled at the woman, and made a note of her name.

“So none of you had any indication that Walker was unhappy with his job?” the Doctor asked then. “No suggestions he was thinking of going away, he didn’t mention visiting any family or friends or anything?”

“He was going through a bad divorce,” Ida responded, “but we’d already told the Police that. And management even suggested he take some time off work, but Walker wanted to be here. He was happy here.”

But the Doctor’s gaze was on the one man who hadn’t spoken. “And what about you?” he asked, eyebrow raised as the man’s head shot up.

The man was tall, like the Doctor, and with dark blonde hair. He was at the back of the room, pointedly ignoring them as he instead pored over rock fragments with what looked like strange markings inked onto them. Occasionally he paused, looked over at them worriedly before glancing away in a skittish manner.

“I don’t know anything,” he said quickly with a shrug, quickly returning to examining the rock fragments beneath a lamp. “Like Ida said, Walker was happy working here, and he hardly ever went on holidays or anything. Last time he went away it was for a research trip.”

There was a lengthy silence then, and when it became clear that he wasn’t going to introduce himself, Scooti introduced the man for him. 

“This is Toby,” she told Rose. “Toby Zed. He’s our archivist.”

Rose smiled politely, making a note of the final team member’s name.

“So there were no warning signs that Walker seemed to be in any trouble, other than his divorce?” Rose asked, looking back over her notes. “No erratic behaviour, no previous disappearances, or anything that seemed out of character for him?”

“None,” Zach confirmed calmly. “Like we said, the only stress he seemed to be under was his divorce, and he said he wanted to be at work.”

The Doctor and Rose shared a look.

“What’s this?” the Doctor asked suddenly, nodding at a human-sized white, faceless robot in the corner of the room, behind Zach’s desk. There was an orb in the middle of its chest, and instead of hands it had what appeared to be a blade and a blowtorch. “Work or play?”

Zach glanced at the robot. “Work,” he responded. “It’s a prototype droid, the facility uses them to ease workload. They’re called Ood.”

Rose frowned. “Ood?”

“Yep,” Danny grinned. “Onsite Operating Droid. Donated by Cybus Industries. And it’s my job to keep them working. I’m in charge of robotics. Every lab has one now, the idea is that they can be programmed to carry out repetitive or basic work so that we can get on with more complicated experiments and so on. Some are programmed to work with computers and other machinery, programming and rewiring and such. Here, we use them for running tests on samples.”

The Doctor looked thoughtful at that. “I don’t suppose they’re equipped with cameras?”

But Zach shook his head apologetically. “Afraid not. It’s not even switched on right now. See that orb in the middle of its chest? If it’s not glowing, the droid’s turned off. And even if it had been turned on when Walker vanished, that robot’s only good for doing the experiments it’s programmed to do. Nothing else.”

~0~0~

“What do you think?” the Doctor asked as they made their way back towards the reception.

They’d gathered as much information from Walker’s colleagues as possible, but they hadn’t been able to provide any further details other than what was already in the Police report.

“It does seem odd,” Rose admitted slowly. “They all seem adamant that he was happy working here. But maybe he was in more debt than just the divorce.”

At that, the Doctor frowned. “Like what?”

She shrugged in response. “I don’t know. None of the staff mentioned an alcohol dependency, but that doesn’t rule out anything like gambling, either online or in a betting shop or similar. And you said yourself, they do cutting-edge research here, Doctor.”

“What are you thinking, that he was being blackmailed, or something?” the Doctor asked, and Rose could already see him mulling over the new idea.

“I’m not sure. But considering how secretive this place is, and the fact that Walker’s vanished without a trace without checking out with his key card or appearing on CCTV, I can’t help but wonder if it’s more to do with his research rather than the man himself.”

The Doctor nodded slowly, taking Rose’s words in. “You could be onto something there,” he agreed slowly as they reached the first set of two double doors leading out to reception.

It was the Doctor who swiped his visitors’ badge to access the doors, and they stepped through to make their way down the length of the corridor before they reached the second set of doors.

“I mean, look at this place,” Rose pointed out, nodding at their current location. “They’ve currently got us locked between two sets of doors that can only be accessed by a key card. This place isn’t exactly easy to break in to, and that’s ignoring all the CCTV.”

The Doctor hummed in agreement, before swiping his card again to get them through the final set of doors and out into reception. They crossed back to the desk, smiling at Nina.

“Can you point us in the direction of your security office?” the Doctor asked. “We’d like to take a look at the CCTV from the night of Walker’s disappearance.”

Nina blinked. “But the Police already looked at it.”

“We know, but it might help us to understand what happened if we can see the footage ourselves,” Rose explained calmly. “Plus, we might spot something the Police didn’t. Fresh eyes, and all that.”

Nina nodded then, though she seemed reluctant. “It’s through there,” she told them, pointing to her left; the opposite side to the doors that led through to the labs.

“Do we need to swipe again?” the Doctor asked, holding up his visitors’ badge even as he began heading to the doors.

“No,” Nina responded, “I’ll buzz you through.”

~0~0~

“Don’t think there’s much for you to see,” the head of security grumbled even as he pulled up the security footage. “He just disappears. Like I told the Police, I don’t know what he did, but somehow Walker got out undetected.”

The Doctor ignored the man, instead pulling a pair of glasses from his suit jacket and slipping them on.

“And you say that’s impossible, Mr...?” Rose trailed off, realising she didn’t know the man’s name.

“Jefferson,” the man supplied. “And that’s exactly what I’m saying. We’re a state of the art facility, we’ve got security cameras everywhere. Yet somehow, Walker just vanished.”

The Doctor was still squinting at the footage, and he nudged Rose, indicating for her to do the same.

“Where’s Walker heading?” he asked, addressing Jefferson but not looking up from the computer screen. “He gets in the lift, goes down. What’s down there?”

Jefferson sniffed. “He went down to the archives.” He leaned over, tapped a few keys, brought up more CCTV footage, this time of the basement. “Most of the employees here refer to it as the Pit.”

Rose frowned slightly. “And there’s no way out through the archives?”

Jefferson shook his head at the question. “No. To get out of the building he’d have to come back up in the lift. There’s no other way out. But he didn’t get back in the lift, and there were no power cuts or problems with CCTV. He just disappeared.” He pointed at the screen, the footage showing Walker heading deeper into the archives. “This is the last footage we have of him. Then nothing. We’ve been having problems with the CCTV in the Pit for weeks now, and it cuts out after that bit, but there’s no sign of him coming back up in the lift, or through reception either.”

“And I’m guessing the archives are locked down, like the rest of this building?” the Doctor asked, although Rose suspected he already knew the answer.

“Only key holders and archivists can get into the archives,” Jefferson confirmed. “Not even I can get down there without express permission from a key holder. Anyone who wants to get down there needs to be authorised.”

“I’m guessing that’s due to sensitive material?” Rose asked. “With all the research and stuff you do here?”

Jefferson nodded. “To get down to the basement where the archives are, the lift requires you to scan your key card. Without that, the lift simply won’t get past the ground floor.”

~0~0~

“So we’ve found out nothing that wasn’t in the Police report then,” Rose sighed as they headed back out of the security office.

But the Doctor shrugged. “Well,” he said, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets, “not exactly. We now know that Walker was last seen in the archives, which the staff refer to as the Pit. Bit ominous, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Rose agreed slowly, “but that doesn’t mean anything. Could just be a nickname. I mean, it is in the basement, it’s only reasonable a nickname like the Pit might stick.”

“But why was Walker going down there?” the Doctor asked as they headed for the reception desk. “None of his team mentioned they were working on anything that would require archival research.”

Rose frowned at that. “What, you think Walker had a secret project on the side? That he was using the facility after hours to do his own research?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Could be.”

They’d reached the reception desk then, and Nina smiled shyly at them, pushing the visitors’ log across the desk for them to sign themselves out.

“You will catch whoever’s made Walker disappear, won’t you?” she asked quietly once the Doctor and Rose had signed their names.

Rose frowned. “What makes you think he didn’t leave of his own accord?”

Nina flushed. “Mr Walker wasn’t like that. Like I said, I didn’t know him well, but I do know he was devoted to his work here. He wouldn’t have just walked out on years of research, not unless he was made to.”

With a polite smile, they bid Nina goodbye and headed for the door.

“So Nina doesn’t think he’d just walk out on research,” the Doctor murmured as he reached for the door, “but does that mean he wasn’t capable of exploiting the facility?”

“Dunno,” Rose admitted as they stepped out of the building and headed down the steps. A bus passed them on the road, and the hustle and bustle of central London swept them up immediately after the quietness of Sanctuary Base Science Facility. “But it could explain why he was in the archives so late at night. And didn’t Ida say that Toby was the archivist? Why would Walker go down to retrieve stuff for their research when the team has a member whose job it is to do just that? So maybe he was doing his own research in secret. Or maybe there was something going on at the facility, maybe Walker knew something about someone who worked there, or something.”

They crossed the road, reaching the car and climbing in. As Rose finished fixing her seatbelt, she found the Doctor frowning thoughtfully at her. 

“What?” she asked with a frown?

“You think it’s a possibility Walker was a whistleblower?” the Doctor asked, looking intrigued.

Rose shrugged. “Don’t know, it’s just an idea. I mean, whatever happened to Walker happened in the archives. And Jefferson said, only key holders and archivists could get down there. So it had to be someone who worked at the facility, to be able to get through security, and get down to the archives. And if they work there they’d know the layout, an’ it could explain how no one saw anyone come or go.”

The Doctor nodded at that thoughtfully. “There’s just one problem with that,” he admitted slowly.

Rose frowned at him.

“Well, I think you’re right that there’s a strong chance it’s someone who works there. And I think some of his team know more than they’re letting on. But that means that anyone in the facility could be a suspect. All they’d have to do is get hold of a key card from a key holder or an archivist. And I’m betting that even the perfect scientists of Sanctuary Base mislay their key cards every now and then. Leave them on their desks while they go to the toilet, drop them in the canteen when they’re getting lunch, the same as how people misplace keys and mobile phones and wallets.”

With a sigh, Rose nodded in understanding. “What you’re saying is that anyone in the facility could have made Walker disappear. I suppose we could ask Dad for a search warrant. But first we need to know who we’re looking for. So, where do we start?”

At the question, the Doctor looked pained. “I hate to say it, Rose,” he said with a grimace, “but I think we need to start with background checks on Walker’s team.”

Rose flashed him a grin at that. “Never thought I’d see the day,” she teased. “The Doctor actually willing to do things by the book.”

He rolled his eyes and put the car key in the ignition. “I do follow the rules!” he protested quickly. Rose arched an eyebrow. He sighed, considering her words. “Well, sometimes.”


	3. Chapter 3

Rose’s phone vibrated and danced across her desk as she squinted at the computer screen in front of her.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” the Doctor asked from his own desk.

But Rose shook her head, not looking up from the computer. “It’s Shareen again,” she responded absently. “I gave her my mobile number after Dad delivered this case to us and said Shareen kept phoning his and Mum’s place. Now she keeps phoning my mobile instead. She’s got some big dinner party coming up she wants me to go to.”

“And you don’t want to go?” the Doctor asked, blinking at her from across their small, cluttered office. 

Rose wrinkled her nose, and finally tore her gaze from the computer screen. “It’s not that, it’s just, I don’t know if I’d be able to make it, what with work, and even if I did I’d have to go alone. An’ if I go alone, Shareen will just try and set me up with one of her boyfriend’s mates again.”

“Oh,” came the Doctor’s response. There was a long pause. “Well, if you want to go, can’t you... I mean, don’t you have anyone you could go with?”

Rose had turned her attention back to her computer, scrolling through the information they’d gathered so far against Walker’s team at Sanctuary Base. “Not really,” she shrugged.   
“Have you got anything on Walker’s team? Everything I’m finding about them is all clean. No red flags for any of them.”

“Same here,” the Doctor admitted, before leaning back in his seat with a sigh. He rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses, before running a hand through his already-messy hair. “I mean, it doesn’t mean that they’re not capable, but there’s nothing for us to use to get a search warrant.”

Two days of background checks of all the employees at Sanctuary Base Science Facility and it seemed they were no closer to solving the case. They’d double-checked and triple-checked all the information on Walker’s team, as well as several other teams, as well as reception staff and security. They must have gone through every employee at the company, and nothing was being flagged up. In all, the whole case felt like a dead end.

Sitting back in her own chair, Rose thought for a few moments. “Couldn’t we at least apply for a warrant to get us into the archives?” she asked after a long moment. “I mean, we don’t have a suspect yet, and can’t search specific employees’ desks and lockers and stuff because of that, but maybe there’s something in the archives? Maybe there’s, I dunno, some evidence, or files or chemicals or something that have been removed, by Walker or by whoever made him disappear.”

At that, the Doctor nodded thoughtfully. “We could give it a go,” he agreed slowly. “I mean, I don’t think they’d let us into the archives any other way, and it could give us something more concrete to go on. At the moment, all we’ve got is hunches.”

~0~0~

Pete managed to secure them a search warrant that would allow them to search lab 6, as well as give them access to the Pit, but before handing it over to Rose, he’d been quick to remind them that the facility were doing their best to cooperate with the investigation, and as such the warrant was a courtesy extended to them by Sanctuary Base. And that meant following their rules and not removing any objects or documents that the facility could not give them without authorisation from the proper authorities.

“I think they’re hiding something,” the Doctor muttered to Rose as they left Pete’s office, warrant in hand, and headed for the lift.

Rose frowned up at him, blinking in confusion. “Who? My Dad?”

“What? No, Sanctuary Base,” the Doctor responded, jabbing the button to summon the lift, before jamming his hands in the pockets of his pinstripe trousers. “As your dad said, they’re doing their best to cooperate. But what if it’s a front? What if they want to seem like they’re cooperating so that we’re less suspicious of them? Think about it, Rose; they could be seen to cooperate with us, and then the moment we find something that could be used as evidence in the case, they could just say they don’t have the authorisation to allow us to remove it from the building. And then, if we went above their heads, tried to get a court order or something, they could just play the whole ‘we were cooperating but the nasty Torchwood agents were being mean to us’ card.”

Rose wrinkled her nose at him. “Why would they do that? Sounds to me like most of the Sanctuary Base staff want whatever happened to Walker to be discovered as much as we do.”

He sighed, sniffed, and instead turned to the lift as the doors opened. They both stepped inside, the Doctor pressing the button that would take them to the staff car park, and the doors slid shut.

“I’m not saying they’re all in on it,” he clarified once the lift had started moving. “Just that, the bosses of Sanctuary Base might want to use us to cover up what happened to Walker. As I said, if they look like they’re cooperating now, the moment we do something they don’t like, they can make out like we’re refusing to cooperate with them. They could make out that they’ve been nothing but helpful to us, and then paint us as the horrible agents who are accusing them of bumping off an employee.”

“Which we’re not doing,” Rose reminded him pointedly.

“Well, no,” the Doctor agreed, “but we don’t know what we might discover with this warrant.”

As the lift doors opened on the car park, the Doctor exited quickly, leaving Rose gaping in the lift behind him.

~0~0~

“Why are they even here?”

“Toby,” Zach sighed in frustration, “just let them do their jobs, yeah? They’re just trying to find out what happened to Walker.”

Toby snorted, and clearly didn’t look impressed. He shot another dark look at the Doctor and Rose as they stood in the corner of the lab, before hurriedly storing away the strange rock fragments with the writing on that he had been working on last time they were there. Rose frowned at that; while she understood the lab did experiments and tests on rocks, Toby’s work looked more akin to archaeology. Was he being given permission to run some sort of side project?

All around them, Torchwood agents were going through the room, searching desks and filing cabinets and equipment cupboards for any clues relating to Walker’s disappearance. 

“Walker’s not here. What do they hope to find in his desk?!” Toby snapped again. “Whatever happened, it has nothing to do with anything in this lab! All they’re doing is keeping us from our research!”

“Walker was our friend,” Ida interrupted him sharply. “He’s missing, Toby. Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you that it’s disrupting our work schedule, but if it means we find Walker, then we need to leave them be.”

While the lab team continued to argue, the Doctor and Rose shared a look. From the moment they had arrived at the facility with a warrant and a team to comb through lab 6, Walker’s colleagues had been on edge. While Zach, Scooti, Ida, and Danny were uncomfortable but understanding in the investigation, Toby had been getting more and more irate since the Doctor’s and Rose’s arrival. The longer the agents remained combing through documents and files looking for anything that could indicate a reason for Walker’s sudden disappearance, the angrier Toby seemed to become. While they were seemingly hitting a brick wall with the contents of Walker’s research papers, both the Doctor and Rose were confident the answers to his disappearance were hidden in the Sanctuary Base facility.

“Whatever you’re working on, you can get back to it as soon as we’re done,” Rose assured Toby with a placating smile, nodding towards the strange rocks he was guarding. “What are you working on right now? Or can’t you say?”

Toby glared, reminding Rose of her little brother when he didn’t want to speak to someone. Ida seemed to notice too, and she rolled her eyes.

She took a breath, before smiling at Rose. “The rocks Toby’s been testing have an unknown composition,” she explained. “We were sent them and a few other pieces with similar markings that other labs are working with. There were a few rocks, a few metal objects that also have a strange composition... We’re hoping to run a few tests and work out just what they are.”

Rose nodded at that, unable to shake the feeling that Toby was far too guarding over a few rocks with a strange composition. As Scooti Manista went to head to her own desk, the Doctor’s head shot round to her. 

“Sorry,” he called across the room to her, “but we’ll have to ask you to not touch the contents of your desks until we’ve had time to search it.”

Scooti faltered, mouth opening and closing but no words coming out, a bewildered look on her face. “Right,” she managed after a moment.

“We’re not suggesting you’re a part of it.” Rose placated the woman with a smile quickly. “But for the sake of the investigation, we’ll need to check your research too. Walker would have been the one signing stuff off, yeah?”

At that realisation, Scooti seemed to relax a little, as did the rest of the team bar Toby.

“Well, yeah,” Zach said after a moment, brow furrowed. “He was key holder. In charge of the lab. And that meant signing off on us needing equipment and conducting research and stuff.”

Rose nodded, still smiling gently. “And because of that, we just need to look through your stuff, rule out your work as well as Walker’s. That way we can say for certain it was nothing to do with any of you guys and we can let you get back to your work.”

The Doctor was eying her carefully, but Rose ignored him. She, like him, truly believed the answer to Walker’s disappearance lay in the labs at Sanctuary Base, but with Toby getting irate and the rest of the team being confused, she knew they needed to diffuse the situation quickly. Even if that did mean telling a few white lies. 

Technically they weren’t lies, though. At least, that’s how she’d rationalise it to her dad if it got back to him; going through the paperwork of the others in the team could help them rule out the team as being involved. 

But it could also rule them in.

~0~0~

“How do you feel about a little sleepover?”

Rose blinked, and looked up from Ida’s research to see the Doctor’s face close to hers. He was grinning at her, a look in his eye that told her he was up to something.

“How do you mean?” she asked, even as she began to cotton on to his plan. A smile tugged at her lips.

“Well,” he said, hands in pockets and rocking on his heels as he glanced across the office to the SB6 lab crew, “Walker did disappear after hours. And maybe if we spend the night here we’ll get a better feel for the place.”

“My dad didn’t authorise a stakeout,” Rose reminded the Doctor calmly. “And I’m not really sure the big bosses here at the facility will like us snooping about in the dark.”

The Doctor snorted. “Come on, Rose! What’s the worst that can happen?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Knowing you? You’ll accidentally ingest a dangerous chemical and I’ll spend the rest of the night in A&E with you while you get your stomach pumped.”

The Doctor grimaced. “How about if I promise not to put anything in my mouth?”

Rose folded her arms. “Last week you tasted blood at a crime scene.”

“Anyway,” the Doctor said quickly, ignoring her final comment, “we don’t have to tell anyone we’re staying here. Actually, I’d recommend that we don’t. We don’t want whoever was responsible for Walker’s disappearance getting wind of the situation and not coming back.”

At that, Rose’s brows furrowed. “You think there’s a chance they’ll come back? Tonight?”

He shrugged. “Now that we’re snooping about and actively searching the lab, I’m betting whoever’s responsible is gonna want to remove incriminating evidence. And if we were right, and Walker had been doing his own experiments in the Pit, or he had dirt on someone working here, they’re going to want it gone.”

“What if they’ve already taken it?” Rose asked, glancing across the room. Her eyes locked on to Toby’s briefly, and she felt a shiver down her spine. She tore her gaze away, met the Doctor’s eyes once more. “Why would they risk coming back then?”

“To make sure they’ve done a thorough job,” the Doctor said as if it were obvious. “Now that we’re snooping around, the tiniest bit of evidence- a scrap of paper, a partial fingerprint, a spot of blood someone failed to clean up- could incriminate them.”

There was a long pause then, the Doctor still staring down at Rose with an excited expression. Rose mulled his words over.

“You think Walker’s dead, don’t you?”

His expression morphed into a solemn one. “Rose,” he said carefully. “Walker’s been gone for weeks. There’s no signs that it’s a kidnapping to get money or information. There’s been no letter, to Walker’s home address, or ex-wife, or here to the facility. Nobody is using him as a bargaining chip. More than likely he’s dead, or has been left for dead.”

Rose nodded, swallowing thickly. Of course, that was the obvious explanation. The Doctor was right; no attempt had been made by the alleged kidnapper to claim some sort of reward in return for letting Walker go. And that most likely insinuated that he wasn’t taken in order to gain something, but more likely to cover something up.

Something connected, most likely, to the facility.


End file.
